Bob Schwartz

Tag: William Carlos Williams

Every task matters

So much depends upon pouring the orange juice.

My second set of tasks each morning are household ones. Preparing breakfast for us.

The main breakfast item varies day to day, but there is a set of fixed daily preliminaries. Coffee is made, the table is set, juice is poured, berries are dished.

Each task, in the grand scheme of things, does not appear to have a major impact. But each of them is done with care, even if once in while the juice spills when poured. Only human.

There is something ultimate about each task. William Carlos Williams wrote, “so much depends Upon/a red wheel barrow”. So much depends upon pouring the orange juice.

© 2025 Bob Schwartz

Everyone and everything matters


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white chickens

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

William Blake, Auguries of Innocence


It is a cliché. Someone intoxicated by marijuana or other psychedelics is fixated on the tiniest item, maybe followed by “oh, wow!” or laughter. Cliched because it can be true. Maybe you’ve had personal experience.

Getting high is far from the only path there. Buddhism describes and recommends perceiving tathata, thusness, suchness, things as they are, or in the words of Suzuki Rosh, things as it is.

The follow-up beat is that no matter how much you perceive the thusness of any particular thing, you can know that everyone and everything is thus. Everyone and everything is deeply itself and also the same, interdependent and equally important. Everyone and everything matters.

Williams’ red wheelbarrow and Blake’s grain of sand are things. And everything.